League of Legends World Championships – Group draws

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Published on: 14/09/2017

Earlier this week in Tuesday, Riot hosted their annual Worlds Group Draw Show for the biggest League of Legends tournament of the year.

The show streams the group draw / allocation results, where each of the most successful teams from the biggest region were directly allocated into one of for groups: Group A, Group B, Group C and Group D.

The groups are made of four team slots, three of which have been filled from the recent draws. As only the first part of the draws have passed, teams in each all come from different regions.
There has been one spot allocated in all 4 groups labelled “TBD”, aka, to be decided. These positions will be filled once all the ‘play in stage’ games are completed. This year’s worlds has seen teams from throughout the world, including smaller regions like Oceania, Turkey and CIS being directly allocated a spot for worlds.

In an effort to keep the standard of the tournament high, the group stages will only allow 16 teams to participated, weeding out 8 teams. Regarding the play in stage, there are once again four groups, A, B, C and D. The winners from each play in stage group will advanced and fill the vacant spots.

Play in stage predictions

Group A:
Team WE
Gambit. CIS
Lyon Gaming

This’ll be very close between Team WE and Gambit. CIS. WE are one of the best teams in China, a highly competitive region, while Gambit have been dominating a less popular region. I’ll give my pick to Team WE here as they have much more experience and actually have international tournaments on their record, that said, by no means are Gambit without chance. (Lyon stands NO chance)

Group B:
Cloud9
Team oNe eSports
LG Dire Wolves

Cloud 9 will be the clear winners of group B. Many would argue C9 as the second best team in the NA region, with their huge experience, they will easily overwhelm the other teams who many haven’t even heard of. C9 has a lot to lose if they don’t make it out.

Group C:
Fnatic
Young Generation
Kaos Latin Gamers

Fnatic will also be the clear winners of group C. Fnatic are still considered one of the top teams in the EU LCS, one of the better regions in the world. That said, the other teams are huge unknowns and can always pull something from thin air.

Group D:
HK Attitude
1907 Fenerbahce
Rampage

Group D is by far the easiest group in the play in stage. There isn’t any ‘major’ team in the group. HK attitude, while they did qualify, had faced hiccups earlier in the year, only placing 6th in the LMS Summer Split. While 1907 won the 2017 Rift Rivals Green, Rampage had taken out the 2017 Rift Rivals – Purple and qualified for the 2017 MSI event. Rampage takes my pick by a slither.

Group stage predictions: (top teams)

Group A:
Edward Gaming
SK Telecom T1
AHQ esports

SKT will win, nothing much to be said. While they did have a hiccup earlier in the year and Edward Gaming too are one of the stronger teams, SKT will definitely dominate the group no matter their fourth opponent. SKT are just much too strong, their lineup of individual talent is extremely high, not to mention near perfect teamwork.

Group B:
Longzhu Gaming
Immortals
GIGABYTE Marines

This is a tossup between Longzhu and Immortals since Gigabyte marines are considered a much lower tier team compared to LZ and IMT. Both Longzhu and Immortals have been extremely strong this year, but Longzhu managed to overwhelm SKT 3-1 in the LCK Summer Playoffs, no easy feat. Lonzhu as Korea’s top team should beat Immortals.

Group C:
G2 Esports
Samsung Galaxy
Royal Never Give Up

Samsung is never consistent, but their unexpected boost in performance can always kick in. Royal Never Give Up can be argued as China’s top team having been very consistent, only losing the number one seed to Edward gaming 2-3 in the Summer playoffs. This group will be extremely tough to predict, but if I had to give my pick, it would be to Royal Never Give Up.

Group D:
Flash Wolves
Misfits
Team SoloMid

Another really close group, all the teams are of simular standing in the global scale. While Team SoloMid always seem to have some sort of curse, never making it far into worlds, TSM have been very strong this year. Since Flash Wolves and Misfits aren’t really standouts, this’ll be TSM’s chance to break out of groups and hopefully at least enter the semi-finals.

Best bets

Cloud 9 as the winners of the Group B, play in stage. Even if the return is fairly low, C9 pretty much has zero chance losing their advancement to the group stages. Their competitors are much too weak.

Royal Never Give up to be the top team in Group C’s ‘group stage’. While the odds of the other teams are fairly even, chances are, the support towards G2 and Samsung are much higher as EU and KR are regarded to be ‘better’ regions. If Royal Never Give up have odds in the x2.5 range, got for it!